Tuesday, July 10, 2012

582 Suicide of Australian Mossad spy; held in the same Israelli prison as Mordechai Vanunu

Suicide of Australian Mossad spy; held in the same Israelli prison as
Mordechai Vanunu

Newsletter published on 15-02-2013

(1) Australia's spy agency ASIS was monitoring
Mossad spies using Australian passports(2) Zygier used Australian
passports for Mossad work in Iran, Arab countries(3) 'Ben talked too much,
he wasn't Mossad material'. Family refuse to comment(4) Was he their
spy? Editorial, Herald Sun, Melbourne(5) Zygier was solitary-confined in
Ayalon max-security prison, with Vanunu & Palestinians(6) Ayalon
Prison also was used to hold John Demjanjuk(7) Zygier role in Dubai
assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh(8) Australian passports
used by Mossad in Dubai assassination; Zygier probably wanted to blow the
whistle(9) Publication of Zygier's photo will blow numerous Mossad
operations(10) Zygier visited Iran undercover for Mossad; recruited Saudi,
Iranian students at Australian Uni

For Jason Katsoukis, the
Australian journalist who first investigated allegations that Ben Zygier was
a Mossad agent, the claims initially sounded "outlandish".

In 2009,
while living in Jerusalem and filing stories to the Australian Fairfax
group, Katsoukis was contacted by an anonymous source with connections to
the intelligence world.

The story that the source told over a series of
conversations was indeed extraordinary.

The source named three
Australians with joint Israeli citizenship whom, he said, were working for a
front company set up by Mossad in Europe selling electronic equipment to
Iran and elsewhere.

"I was tipped off in October 2009," Katsoukis told
the Guardian on Wednesday, recalling the events that would lead to his
calling Zygier at his home in Jerusalem and accusing him of being an Israeli
spy.

"The story was that Mossad was recruiting Australians to spy for
them using a front company in Europe. It all seemed too good to be
true.

"But what I was told seemed to check out. The company did exist. I
also managed to establish that Zygier and another of the individuals had
worked for it. I wasn't able to confirm the third name.

"I was told
too that the Australian authorities were closing in on Zygier and that he
might even be arrested.

"There was other stuff about Zygier. In Australia
you can change your name once a year. He'd done it four times I think, but
they were beginning to get suspicious. I also found out that he had applied
for a work visa for Italy in Melbourne."

The repeated changes of name
would have allowed Zygier to create new identities and multiple
passports.

While Katsoukis was working on the story – still uncertain if
it stacked up – something happened that encouraged both his editors and
Katsoukis himself to bring forward their contact with Zygier.

In
January 2010, a Mossad hit squad murdered the Hamas official Mahmoud
al-Mabhouh, in Dubai.

It emerged that the team had been supplied with
false passports from a number of countries including Germany, Ireland and
the UK, apparently confirming the very practice Katsoukis was
investigating.

"The feeling was that we should go to Zygier and put the
story to him. It wasn't difficult to find him. He'd was back in Jerusalem so
I called him at home.

"When I spoke to him he was incredulous at
first and said fuck off – but what was interesting was that he did not hang
up. He did soundly genuinely shocked. But he listened to what I had to
say.

"I still wonder why he didn't hang up. He denied everything however.
He said he hadn't visited the countries it had been claimed he had. I tried
calling again but in the end he told me to buzz off."

Katsoukis also
spoke to the CEO of the alleged front company, and had an equally strange
series of exchanges.

"He seemed a bit weird. He denied all knowledge of
what I was talking about, but then wanted to talk to me again and make an
arrangement to meet up."

Still believing that the story sounded
"crazy", Katsoukis wanted to check with other sources. Among them was a
senior government official he knew. To his surprise, when he was given the
opportunity to knock the story down, this person instead appeared to confirm
it.

Fairfax published the story of the three Australian citizens who had
allegedly been spying for Israel, but withheld the details about the
existence of the front company.

(2) Zygier used Australian passports
for Mossad work in Iran, Arab countries

Evidence has been unearthed that strongly suggests Israel's infamous
Prisoner X, who was jailed under extraordinary circumstances in 2010,
was an Australian national from Melbourne.

Investigations by the
ABC's Foreign Correspondent program have revealed Ben Zygier, who used the
name Ben Alon in Israel, was found hanged in a high-security cell at a
prison near Tel Aviv in late 2010.

His body was flown to Melbourne for
burial a week later.

The death goes part of the way to explain the
existence in Israel of a so-called Prisoner X, widely speculated in local
and international media as an inmate whose presence has been acknowledged by
neither the jail system nor the government.

The case is regarded as
one of the most sensitive secrets of Israel's intelligence community, with
the government going to extraordinary lengths to stifle media coverage and
gag attempts by human rights organisations to expose the
situation.

{Watch the full Foreign Correspondent report on Prisoner X on
iview.}

The Prisoner X cell is a jail within a jail at Ayalon Prison in
the city of Ramla. It was built for the assassin of Israeli prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin.

The ABC understands Mr Zygier became its occupant in
early 2010. His incarceration was so secret that it is claimed not even
guards knew his identity.

Israeli media at the time reported that
this Prisoner X received no visitors and lived hermetically sealed from the
outside world.

When an Israeli news website reported that the prisoner
died in his cell in December 2010, Israeli authorities removed its web
pages.

An Israeli court order prohibiting any publication or public
discussion of the matter is still in force; Israel's internal security
service, Shin Bet, has effectively blocked any coverage of the
matter.

Secret imprisonment

Foreign Correspondent can reveal that
Mr Zygier was 34 at the time of his death and had moved to Israel about 10
years earlier. He was married to an Israeli woman and had two small
children.

Mr Zygier's arrest and jailing in Israel remains a mystery, but
the ABC understands he was recruited by spy agency Mossad.

It is
understood Mr Zygier "disappeared" in early 2010, spending several months in
the Prisoner X cell.

At the time, human rights organisation Association
for Civil Rights in Israel criticised the imprisonment and wrote to Israel's
attorney-general.

"It's alarming that there's a prisoner being held
incommunicado and we know nothing about him," wrote the association's chief
legal counsel Dan Yakir.

The assistant to the attorney-general wrote
back: "The current gag order is vital for preventing a serious breach of the
state's security, so we cannot elaborate about this
affair."

Contacted by the ABC, Mr Yakir would not comment on the case,
quoting a court order gagging discussion.

It's called a
disappearance, and a disappearance is not only a violation of that person's
due process rights - that's a crime.

Bill van Esveld, a Jerusalem-based
advocate for Human Rights Watch, has described the secret imprisonment of
Prisoner X as "inexcusable".

"It's called a disappearance, and a
disappearance is not only a violation of that person's due process rights -
that's a crime," he told Foreign Correspondent.

"Under international
law, the people responsible for that kind of treatment actually need to be
criminally prosecuted themselves."

Mr Zygier's apparent suicide in prison
adds to the mystery. He was found hanged in a cell which was equipped with
state-of-the-art surveillance systems installed to prevent suicide. Guards
reportedly tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

His body was retrieved
and flown to Melbourne. He was buried in Chevra Kadisha Jewish cemetery in
the suburb of Springvale on December 22, seven days after his
death.

Mr Zygier's family has declined to speak to the ABC, and friends
and acquaintances approached by Foreign Correspondent in Melbourne have also
refused to comment.

Australia's
domestic intelligence agency ASIO has long scrutinised Australian Jews
suspected of working for Mossad.

The agency believes Mossad recruits
change their names from European and Jewish names to "Anglo" names. They
then take out new passports and travel to the Arab world and Iran, to
destinations Israeli passport holders cannot venture.

"Australians abroad are generally seen to be fairly innocent," he
said.

"It's a clean country - it has a good image like New
Zealand.

"There aren't many countries like that, so our nationality and
anything connected with it can be very useful in intelligence
work."

The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that Mr Zygier
also carried an Australian passport bearing the name Ben
Allen.

'Allegations troubling'

When told details of Foreign
Correspondent's investigation, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said he was
concerned by the claims.

"Those allegations certainly do trouble me,"
Senator Carr said.

"It's never been raised with me. I'm not reluctant to
seek an explanation from the Israeli government about what happened to Mr
Allen and about what their view of it is.

"The difficulty is I'm
advised we've had no contact with his family [and] there's been no request
for consular assistance during the period it's alleged he was in
prison."

Senator Carr says in the absence of a complaint by Mr Zygier's
family, there is little for the Australian Government to act
upon.

However the transgression came about, it would have to be involved
with espionage, treachery - very, very sensitive information that known to
others would pose an immediate threat to Israel as a nation
state.

Former ASIS operative Warren ReedInternational conventions
spell out that when a foreigner is jailed or dies, their diplomatic mission
must be informed.

Senator Carr claims Australian diplomats in Israel only
knew of Mr Zygier's incarceration after his death.

Mr van Esveld says
it is inexcusable for the Australian Government not to be
notified.

"The obligation of one country to notify another when the other
citizen has been arrested, detained, especially if they die - that is so
basic. It is called customary law," he said.

"Which means that even
if Israel didn't ratify a treaty saying it has to notify the other country,
it still has to do so because that is such a basic norm of interstate
relations."

The greater mystery is why Mr Zygier was imprisoned under
such secrecy.

Sources with connections to Israel's intelligence community
have told Foreign Correspondent his predicament would have been "extreme" to
warrant such harsh treatment.

Former ASIS operative Mr Reed told the
ABC: "However the transgression came about, it would have to be involved
with espionage, treachery - very, very sensitive information that known to
others would pose an immediate threat to Israel as a nation
state."

Friends, acquaintances of
alleged spy say 'There were rumors he was Mossad'; former coworker: Ben was
proud of his army service. Father says matter too painful for family to
comment on Ynet

Latest Update: 02.13.13, 20:15 / Israel News

The
story of Ben Zygier, the Australian national who allegedly committed suicide
while being held in an Israeli prison – the details of which remain under a
strict gag order – continues to resonate in his native Australia.

The
Australian Financial Review published a story with Patrick Durkin, a friend
of Zygier, who clerked with him and a group of friends at Norton Rose, a law
firm, in 2001.

"I remember drinking with Ben one night in 2001 when he
recounted his famous story about taking a bullet in the posterior during his
military service in Israel, which he served shortly before joining our
group," Durkin said.

ABC's 'Prisoner X'
investigation

According to him, "He described in vivid detail serving on
the front line and backtracking across war-torn countryside while gunfire
peppered the ground," recalling the incident that left him wounded in his
rear end.

"He was extremely proud of his time in the military, despite
our endless teasing about the wound we never asked to see.

In regards
to Israel, Durkin recalls arguing with Zygier: "I remember passionately
debating the finer points of the Israeli-Palestine conflict with Ben who was
obviously deeply engaged with the issue."

He also spoke of Ben's personal
interests, citing "his fondness for the music of Deborah Conway" an
Australian singer, with whom "he was connected through his uncle Willy
Zygier – Conway’s long-time partner."

He additionally noted, that despite
being “five-foot something” Zygier played, and was actually quite skilled at
football; "Ben dominated on the ball."

The two had met when "Ben had
joined our group of 20-odd articled clerks halfway through the
year."

As the years passed the group grew apart, Zygier "reportedly moved
back to Israel more than 10 years ago. Our group lost touch with him and
never knew the life he established with a wife and two small
children."

According to his friends he was "serious" but
"aloof."

As an explanation, Durkin cites Zygier's educational background:
"He had attended Bialik College in suburban Melbourne – described as a
co-educational, Zionist, Jewish day school".

According to the
Australian paper The Age, Zygier was a member of a prominent Jewish family
in the Australian city of Melbourne, where Geoffrey, his father, is the
executive director of the Victoria Jewish Community Council.

"It's
still just too painful for us to speak about at the moment," Geoffrey,
Zygier's father said from his home in Malvern.

"We understand the
interest, but we've decided not to talk to anyone, not at the moment. I'm
sorry."

'Never struck me as stable'

Meanwhile, despite the
family's silence, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) has reportd that
members of Australia’s Jewish community have begun to share what they knew
about Zygier’s earlier life.

A friend from the Hashomer movement, who was
with Zygier in Kibbutz Gazit in 1994 said that Zygier “never struck me as
someone who was stable.”

“I could never imagine someone like that being
good for Mossad,” said the acquaintance, who like most acquaintances
interviewed about Zygier did not want to be identified. “Also, Ben talked
too much.”

Others who close to the family repeated reports that the
parents were devastated in by their son’s 2010 death.

“They were
absolutely shocked, it was just terrible,” recalled Danny Lamm, president of
the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Lamm said he had no current
information on the case.

“There was a complete shutdown,” said someone
else about circumstances surrounding Zygier’s death. “No one knew what the
story was. The parents crumbled. They cut off from life. They were broken.
They completely withdrew from everything for two years.”

Both of
Zygier’s parents quit the Jewish community posts they held around the time
of Zygier’s death.

Israel has been gripped by a guessing
game over the identity of a mysterious prisoner being held in such secrecy
that even his guards do not know his name.

{photo} Palestinian
prisoners jailed in the Israeli Ayalon prison in the city of Ramla Photo:
CORBIS {end}

By Richard Spencer and Adrian Blomfield 9:45PM BST 21 Jun
2010

The elusive "Mr X" is being held for unspecified crimes and confined
in total seclusion within a private wing of the maximum-security Ayalon
prison.

No one knew of his existence until the shroud of secrecy was
briefly lifted after a story appeared on the Ynet news website, owned by
Israel's leading Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Quoting
unidentified officials within the Israeli penitentiary service, it disclosed
that Mr X was being held in Unit 15, a wing of Ayalon prison that contains a
single cell.

He is not though to receive any visitors and his wing is cut
off from the rest of the prison by double iron doors. So hermetic are the
conditions in which he is held that other prisoners can neither see nor
hear him.

"He is simply a person without a name and without an
identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside
world," a prison official was quoted as saying.

Within hours, the
story had vanished from the newspaper's website, allegedly after Israel's
domestic intelligence service won a gagging order banning all media coverage
of the case.

The attempt to redraw the veil has had only limited success,
however, with the disappearance of the story serving only to whet the
interests of human rights activists in Israel, who have now launched a
campaign to force the state to unmask Mr X and disclose his
crimes.

Dan Yakir, chief legal counsel for the Association for Civil
Rights in Israel, the country's oldest human rights group, said: "There is
no information on whether this person has been charged, whether he has been
tried or whether he has been convicted."

In a letter to the Israeli
attorney general last week which has yet to receive a response, Mr Yakir
protested the secrecy surrounding Mr X's detention.

"It is
insupportable that, in a democratic country, authorities can arrest people
in complete secrecy and disappear them from public view without the public
even knowing such an arrest took place," he wrote.

Amid the intrigue and
the silence of the domestic press, Mr X's cause has also been taken up by
influential Jewish bloggers, most notably Richard Silverstein, a US-based
commentator who has played a leading role in forcing Israel to drop gagging
orders in recent months.

While there has been little but speculation as
to what Mr X may have done, there can be little doubt about the importance
attached to him by the state for he is being held in the cell specially
built to house Yigal Amir, the Israeli extremist who assassinated Yitzhak
Rabin, the former prime minister, in 1995.

But one Israeli security
expert said that the secrecy suggested espionage rather than terrorism is
likely to lie at the heart of the mystery.

In 1983, Marcus Klingberg,
a leading Israeli scientist, was jailed for 20 years for passing secrets
about the country's biological warfare programme to the Soviets. But it was
only after he had been in prison for a decade that Israelis heard for the
first time about Klingberg's existence, arrest and conviction.

Mr X
is being held in the same prison as Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle-blower who
revealed Israeli nuclear secrets before he was lured out of Britain by a
Mossad honeytrap in 1986 and jailed for 18 years.

Vanunu was sent back to
prison last month for talking to foreigners, in violation of his
parole.

Israel's prison service has declined to confirm or deny the
existence of Mr X on security grounds.

Ayalon-Gefängnis
is one of several prisons in Ramla, Israel. John Demjanjuk was kept here in
1986.[1] The part for solitary confinement was built for Yigal Amir. It was
also used for Prisoner X who is reported to have killed himself in his cell
in December 2010.[2]

WHEN Ben Zygier died alone in a maximum-security
prison in Israel he was under investigation by ASIO, which suspected him of
using his Australian passport to spy for Israel, Fairfax Media can
reveal.

Benji, as he was known in Jerusalem, reacted angrily when Fairfax
Media confronted him in early 2010 with allegations that he was working for
Israel's security agency, Mossad.

"Who the f--- are you?" an
incredulous Mr Zygier asked Fairfax's then Middle East correspondent Jason
Koutsoukis. "What is this total bullshit you are telling me?"

He
expressed shock at the suggestion he was under any kind of surveillance and
said that he had also changed his name for personal reasons.

"I have
never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to," Mr Zygier
said. "I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is
ridiculous."

Koutsoukis said: "He was at first angry, then
exasperated that I wouldn't accept his denials at what I was putting to
him.

"He told me he was like any other Australian who had made aliyah
[immigration to Israel] and was trying to make a life in
Israel."

Fairfax Media spoke to Mr Zygier in Israel in early 2010 after
learning that ASIO was investigating at least three dual Australian-Israeli
citizens who had emigrated to Israel in the past decade. At the time,
ASIO would not comment on the case. On Wednesday, the agency again
refused to comment.

Each of the men had travelled back to Australia
separately to change their names and obtain a new passport, two intelligence
sources said at the time in Koutsoukis' story published in The
Age.

One man had changed his name three times, and others had changed
theirs twice, the source said, from names that identified them as
European-Jewish to ones that were Anglo-Australian.

In each case, the
men had used the new passports to travel to Iran, Syria and Lebanon - all
countries that do not recognise Israel and do not allow Israelis, or anyone
with an Israeli stamp in their passport, to enter. Israel also bans its
citizens from travelling to these countries for security
reasons.

Along with his Ben Zygier identity, he also used Ben Alon, Ben
Allen and Benjamin Burrows.

At the time, Fairfax Media was
investigating the men's involvement with a European communications company
that had a subsidiary in the Middle East. The company's chief executive
denied the men were ever employed by the organisation.

It is believed
- although Fairfax Media has been unable to confirm - that Mr Zygier
travelled back to Australia in 2009 to do an MBA at Monash
University.

A source at the time observed him over several days sitting
with a group of students from Saudi Arabia and Iran at the university's
Caulfield campus.

The source said: "[Australian Taxation Office] records
from 2008 show that he applied for and was approved a HECS loan for
postgraduate studies at Monash University where he is currently [November
2009] studying."

Since 2006, Monash has been involved in education in
Middle Eastern countries, and in 2007 it proposed an initiative for
higher-degree students from Saudi Arabia.

Apart from his move to
Israel and his MBA study, little is known about Mr Zygier's movements over
the decade before he died, except that he was working in insurance law at
the Australian firm Deacons in 2002.

In Israel Mr Zygier married a local
woman with whom he had two children, the ABC reported.

It was well
known that Israel approached people who emigrated from other countries to
assist it by handing over their passports, an Israeli intelligence expert
told Fairfax in 2010.

"Their names are used later but the person
providing the passport is not involved," the expert said.

It is
understood the ASIO investigation into Mr Zygier and the two other men began
at least six months before the January 10, 2010, assassination of senior
Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, widely believed to have been carried out
by Mossad using Australian and European passports.

Three of those
suspected of taking part in the assassination were travelling on Australian
passports, using the names of dual Australian-Israeli citizens, authorities
in Dubai confirmed.

There is no suggestion that the three Australian
names linked to Mabhouh's assassination are connected to Mr Zygier or the
other men investigated by ASIO.

After initially denying the
Australian government had any knowledge that one of its citizens was
detained in Israel, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said some officers in the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade were aware of his
detention.

The revelations raises questions about how much the Australian
government knew about the conditions under which Mr Zygier was being
held in the maximum security Ayalon Prison.

The ABC's Foreign
Correspondent program, which named Mr Zygier as "Prisoner X", said he hanged
himself in the specially constructed cell that was meant to be suicide
proof.

Mr Zygier was held in isolation - and in secret - in Unit 15, a
separate wing of Ayalon Prison that contains just a single cell in Israel's
most secure prison in Ramla, near Tel Aviv.

The cell is believed to
have been built for Yigal Amir, who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in
November 1995.

It is described as a cell within a block within a prison.
The inmate in Unit 15 was allowed no visitors and even after his death his
identity was a state secret, protected by a court-issued gag order despite
continuing protests from human rights groups.

"He is simply a person
without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and
utter isolation from the outside world," a prison official was quoted as
saying in the Israeli media in 2010, when news of "Prisoner X" first broke,
and was then suppressed.

It is unclear what, if anything, Australia was
told by the Israeli authorities about the death in custody of one of its
citizens, or whether any consular assistance was provided to Mr Zygier
during his time in solitary confinement.

(8) Australian passports
used by Mossad in Dubai assassination; Zygier probably wanted to blow the
whistle

It is a tragic tale of intrigue
and espionage stretching from the Middle East to Melbourne, but new light
has now been shed on what may have led to the death of Prisoner
X.

Tuesday's Foreign Correspondent investigation prised open the case of
Prisoner X, a man now understood to be an agent of Mossad - Israel's
notorious intelligence agency - and who was also an Australian.

Ben
Zygier, 34, allegedly killed himself in a top secret, supposedly
suicide-proof Israeli prison cell in 2010. He was accused of espionage
and treason.

There are now claims his arrest may have had something
to do with the assassination of a top Hamas official in 2010 and the
Australian passport scandal in the same year.

Doubts have also been
cast over whether he took his own life.

One of his Israeli lawyers who
met him just days before his death says he gave no indication he was going
to commit suicide.

"When I saw him, there was nothing to indicate he was
going to commit suicide," said Avigdor Feldman, a top human rights
lawyer.

In an interview with Israel's army radio, Mr Feldman said he had
met Prisoner X to offer him advice ahead of his trial.

"His family
asked that I meet him to advise him. The trial hadn't properly started yet,"
he said, indicating the prisoner had already been indicted and that talks
were under way with senior prosecutors to reach a plea bargain.

"He
asked for advice and I sat and listened to him. Not that I'm a psychologist,
but he appeared rational, focused, he spoke clearly about the issue and
didn't exude any sense of self-pity."

A day or two later, Mr Feldman's
liaison at the prison rang him to say the prisoner had died.

The
lawyer admitted he was surprised "that a man who was being held in a cell
like that, a cell which was being monitored and checked 24-hours a day,
could manage to commit suicide by hanging himself."

Mr Feldman, who said
he knew the prisoner's real name and had access to the file on his arrest
but was unable to give any details for legal reasons, said it was clear the
detainee was facing a very long jail term.

"I understood that he was told
he was likely to face the longest possible jail term and that he was likely
to be ostracised by his family," he said.

He would be the last person
on earth that I would guess would take his own life, especially being in a
high security prison where there's nothing to hang from.

Back in
Melbourne, Zygier family friend Henry Greener also doubts the official
suicide story.

"He had everything to live for and that's why the death
being noted as suicide comes as a great surprise to us all," he
said.

"He would be the last person on earth that I would guess would take
his own life, especially being in a high security prison where there's
nothing to hang from."

Mr Zygier came from a prominent Jewish family
in Melbourne.

In the 1990s he studied law at Monash University, before
moving to Israel in his 20s, where he did military service and
married.

After several years, he returned to Melbourne and went back to
Monash to study an MBA.

By then, reports say he was already working
for Mossad.

Mr Greener, who presents a Jewish program on Melbourne
community television and has known the Zygier family since before Ben was
born, says Ben had a good family life.

"He matured beautifully, he
was very happy, he was in a relationship and married and having children,"
he said.

"He seemed to be really happy living in Israel, loved living
there. He had a social conscience and for him it was important to be living
there because there are so many social issues in Israel."

But Mr
Greener says neither he, nor the Zygier family, know what what happened in
2010.

"We didn't know anything about what happened to him except there
were whispers about him being in Mossad and whispers about detention and
something went horribly wrong," he said.

From his home in Seattle,
author and blogger Richard Silverstein has been following the
case.

"My understanding of what he was doing in Australia was he was
going back a couple of times and getting new passports and different
identities that they could use for other Mossad operations, he
registered in an MBA at the Monash campus and he was seen with Saudi
students and Iranian students so he might've been doing recruitment on
campus," he said.

January 2010 was a delicate
time for Mossad and for Australia-Israeli relations.

Australian
passports had been used by Mossad agents sent to assassinate Mahmoud
Al-Mabouh, a senior Hamas official, in Dubai.

Soon after - connected or
not - Mr Zygier found himself in prison.

Mr Silverstein says Mr Zygier
may have been caught up in the assassination operation.

"It's
entirely possible he was involved in this operation in some capacity, it's
also possible that the assassination itself may have turned him away from
what Mossad was doing," he said.

"You can't really rule anything
out."

Mr Greener agrees something went horribly wrong.

"Beginning
of 2010, where there is the passport issue, the Dubai assassination that
occurred and apparently Ben was put under suspicion as one of the people who
might've been involved in that whole affair," he said.

Back in
Canberra it seems Australian spies were watching.

ASIO had reportedly
been investigating three Australian-Israeli citizens suspected of
spying.

It was through ASIO that news of the jailing of Mr Zygier first
reached Australian diplomats.

Since Tuesday's Foreign Correspondent
report aired, Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has sent mixed messages,
first saying Australia knew nothing about the prisoner before his
death.

But today it was revealed diplomats did know about his detention
in February 2010, 10 months before the Australian killed himself in
prison.

"When information is received through intelligence channels then
obviously it doesn't find its way into your normal consular filing
system and so when we were checking our consular files there was not
that relevant information, we've since pieced more of it together," DFAT
secretary Peter Varghese said.

'Crisis of conscience'

So what
did this young Australian do that landed him in a high security Israeli
prison?

Reports from the region suggest he was facing serious charges of
espionage of helping Israel's enemies.

Mr Silverstein says there are
several possibilities.

"If this was a betrayal of the state for financial
reasons in which he was turned by another country's security intelligence
services and went to work for another country for financial reasons or
whatever reasons," he said.

"The other possibility which I'm more
inclined to is there might've been a crisis of conscience of some kind, he
might've been involved in activities he found repellent and he might've
wanted to get out of the situation or blow the whistle on whatever he was
engaged in."

Mr Greener has a similar theory.

"I think it was a
very personal thing where Ben did something, it wasn't very well received by
his superiors, he went into jail for it and unfortunately he didn't come out
alive," he said.

In Israel, the Australian's detention and death have had
virtually no coverage until now.

The government's gag order has been
partially lifted.

An Israeli court statement sheds some light on the
case, but not much.

"The inmate was registered under a false identity for
security reasons, but his family was notified immediately upon his arrest,"
the statement reads.

"The president has submitted the case to the
state prosecutor's office to examine aspects of negligence."

Mr
Zygier's secret incarceration and death have also created a political uproar
in Israel.

"Obscure prisoners kill themselves, no one knows about their
existence. How is this on a par with a proper democracy, with a proper rule
of law?" Israeli MP Zehava Galon has asked.

Three years since the
saga began, the mystery of the young man's death is slowly unravelling for
those who were close to him.

"Everybody loved Ben, he was considered to
be a top boy, he always was," Mr Greener said.

If the reports — and
unraveling details — about Ben Zygier’s work with the Mossad are true,
Israel has every reason to try and keep his existence and identity a secret,
however superflous those efforts may be.

As details about the life, work
and untimely demise of ‘Prisoner X’ unravel, the most intriguing unanswered
questions remain: why did Israel secretly imprison him and why he is dead?
But the details of the story appear to be making one thing clear; Israel’s
security services likely had every reason in the world to (try to) keep the
affair and Ben Zygier’s identity a secret.

Like most spy stories,
nothing about Prisoner X, his true identity, what he did or didn’t do for
Israel’s Mossad or even how he died is known with any degree of certainty.
But as various reports and accounts – mostly from Australia, but others from
Israel and around the world – come out, pieces of a puzzle begin to take
shape into a picture that resembles a spy thriller, possibly gone horribly
wrong.

The original ABC investigative report, which revealed Ben Zygier
as the highly-censored ‘Prisoner X,’ identified him as an Australian-born
Jew who emigrated to Israel in his early twenties. From his age at the time
he immigrated and pictures of him in an IDF uniform, it is safe to
assume that he was drafted into the army soon after arriving in the
country. Those details, though unconfirmed like every other part of the
story, are the most reasonable and normal parts of the story. He would
have been only one of thousands of Diaspora Jews who move to Israel as
young adults and volunteer to serve in the IDF.

From there, the
story gets much more interesting. At some point, it appears Zygier returned
to Australia where he changed his name to Ben Allen and took out a new
passport under that non-Jewish-sounding name. That, in and of itself, it
appears, was enough to spark the interest of the Australian Security
Intelligence Organization (ASIO).

The ABC report stated:

In 2010
ASIO suspected that several Australian Jews were working for Mossad, after
changing their names from European or Jewish names to Anglo names. Then with
new Australian passports and Australian accents, they could travel freely in
the Arab world and to places like Iran, to destinations where no Israeli
could venture.Israel has long been suspected of having a hand in covert
operations within Iran in efforts to sabotage, spy on and subvert that
country’s suspected military nuclear program. But from the assassinations of
nuclear scientists to explosions at nuclear research and development
facilities, it is difficult to believe that whatever intelligence agency
(or agencies) was behind those events did not have agents on the ground,
whether to carry out the covert operations themselves or to train and
equip Iranian opposition groups to do the work on its behalf.

Other
operations widely attributed to the Mossad, such as the 2008 assassination
of senior Hezbollah official Imad Mughniyah in Syria, would also likely have
required agents on the ground, either to carry out the work themselves or
train and equip others.

The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday reported
that Zygier, aka Ben Allen, aka Benjamin Burrows, was one of at least three
dual Australian-Israeli citizens under investigation by ASIO. All reportedly
changed their names at least once and took out new passports under their
pseudonyms.

“The men had used the new passports to travel to Iran,
Syria and Lebanon,” the Herald reported. Additionally, the three were
reportedly involved with a straw company that sold electronics equipment to
Iran.

As former Australian intelligence agent Warren Reed explained to
ABC, it is greatly advantageous to use Australian nationals and their
passports for covert intelligence work.

Australians abroad are
generally seen to be fairly innocent. It’s a clean country, it has a good
image like New Zealand. There aren’t many countries like that so our
nationality and anything connected with it can be very useful in
intelligence work.If Zygier was a Mossad agent and did indeed travel to
Iran, Syria and Lebanon under a new name, it is entirely plausible that he
took part in any number of covert operations attributed to Israel. If that
is the case, and it is unlikely we’ll ever know, it becomes clear why Israel
would jump through so many hoops to try and keep his identity a
secret.

Almost by definition, a covert operative in enemy territory puts
his or her own life at risk, but they also work with others – both local
recruited agents and often foreign intelligence operatives. By revealing
Zygier’s identity, if he is who it appears he may be, anyone he ever
worked with is suddenly at risk.

Just by publishing his photo, any
competent intelligence agency can begin to put together the pieces of how
attacks and intelligence operations targeting them transpired. Analysts can
review photos and video footage containing the exposed agent and discover
the identities of those he worked and traveled with. The careers of covert
operatives can be ended. The lives of those agents they recruited will
likely come to a swift end. But from an operational perspective, years of
work installing equipment and building networks for intelligence collection
and sabotage can vanish overnight. Any responsible spy agency would
themselves dismantle those networks the moment they fear any serious
exposure.

If Zygier was a covert Israeli operative, it is absolutely
clear why the Mossad and the entire Israeli government would want to prevent
his identity from being made public. Its work in whatever countries he may
have operated in are likely over. It would take years to rebuild the
networks that were destroyed.

We will never likely know the full
story of why Israel put Zygier into secret detention. But one angle revealed
in recent (foreign) news reports does provide – highly speculative – clues
as to why his (second) country might have stopped trusting him to the point
of making him disappear into one of the most secure prison facilities in
Israel.

One acquaintance of Zygier’s from 1994, long before he would have
ever joined the Israeli army, let alone any clandestine service, spoke
anonymously to JTA after news of the affair broke Tuesday. He “never
struck me as someone who was stable, he said, adding, “Ben talked too
much.”

In another account published Wednesday, of when an Australian
journalist actually accused Zygier of working for the Mossad in early 2010,
the suspected spy reacted strangely and angrily, in a demeanor one would not
expect from a trained spy.

“Who the f–k are you?” an incredulous Mr
Zygier told Fairfax’s then Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis.
“What is this total bullshit you are telling me?”If the Mossad did
believe Zygier was mentally unstable and either was likely to, or had
already revealed too much about his clandestine work for Israel, it is
almost understandable why they would want him to disappear. It’s also
possible that Zygier’s demise was a result of treachery, accidental
exposure, an impending Moshe Vanunu-type planned public exposé, or a host of
other spy novel-esque scenarios.

What actually happened? We may never
know. But as the story unravels, it is becoming clearer and clearer why
Israel would have wanted it to remain a secret.

For an alternate
analysis, read Dimi Reider’s take here

Update: On Wednesday night, Israel
officially acknowledged that in 2010 it held a dual Israeli citizen under a
false name in secret detention, which it described as court ordered. The
statement added that the prisoner was represented by three lawyers, whom it
named, and that his family was notified after his arrest. The
acknowledgement did not name Prisoner X or give any reason for his detention
but said an inquiry ruled his death to be a suicide and that a further probe
looked into whether negligence played a role in his death.

Ben
Zygier Visited Iran Undercover for Mossad, Recruited Saudi, Iranian Students
at Australian University

by RICHARD SILVERSTEIN

on FEBRUARY 13,
2013

UPDATE:Israel has just released (Hebrew and English) its first
official statement about its treatment of Ben Zygier. It has acknowledged
without specifically naming him that it held a prisoner under a
fictitious name and that the prisoner died in custody. The State said
that it had notified Zygier’s family of his detention. It said it would
investigate the possibility of negligence in his treatment while in
prison.

In an effort to address the charge that Zygier received shoddy
judicial treatment, the government also revealed that he had lawyers. He
was represented by the same firm that represented Ehud Olmert and which
often deals in cases with the security apparatus. But they are not
attorneys known for taking on human rights cases. The claim by the
State that Zygier was afforded all rights due to him as a citizen and
that all legal proceedings were proper seems either laughable on its
face or an outright lie.

The statement also claims Zygier was held
under the auspices of the justice ministry. The minister is Yaakov Neeman,
the same individual who spoke from the Knesset rostrum answsering questions
of MKs yesterday claiming that he knew nothing of the case and that Zygier
was never under his ministry’s jurisdiction. An outright lie. A further
odd development in the story is the news that Zygier, who trained as a
lawyer, interned in the legal firm of the current justice minister: none
other than Mr. Neeman!

An Israeli judge oversaw a supposed
investigation into the circumstances of his death, but the findings are
secret. Six weeks ago, the file was allegedly sent by the judge to the
State prosecutor for investigation of the possibility of negligence involved
in the death. This is supposed to satisfy us I suppose.

Besides the
three MKs who asking probing questions of Neeman that elicited his lies,
another hero of the proceedings was Binyamin Ben Eliezer, acting Speaker,
who was asked by the military censor to tell MKs that there was a gag order
in place that prohibited discussion of the matter. Ben Eliezer refused to
relay the message to the legislators and the debate continued without
interruption. * *

The Prisoner X-Ben Zygier case continues to develop.
I will be interviewed by Israeli Channel 10¢s Tzinor Layla at 12 midnight
Israel time. It will be the first story up in the program. The Social TV
video above was recorded about 48 hours ago and reflects what I knew at
the time. But it’s still useful as an overview of the entire
case.

The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting report that includes
material they reported back in 2010 about Zygier’s spying within
Australia on behalf of the Mossad. He was accused then by Australia’s
intelligence agency of applying multiple times for passports in
different names including Ben Alon, Ben Allen and Benjamin Burrows. This
is a sure sign among the world’s intelligence agencies that their
nation’s passports are being used for espionage purposes.

This
occurred shortly before three passports of Australian-Israeli dual citizens
were cloned by the Mossad and used in the assassination of Mahmoud
al-Mabouh. Though there isn’t necessarily any direct connection between
Zygier’s activities and the Dubai episode.

The news report also notes
that Zygier enrolled at Monash University (where his mother worked) in an
MBA program. While there he was allegedly seen socializing on campus with
groups of Saudi and Iranian students. This might mean that just as Zygier
himself was recruited to the Mossad, he may’ve been recruiting potential
agents. Presumably these students would eventually return to their home
countries where they might serve useful purposes for Israeli
intelligence.

It appears likely that Zygier used his new passports for
travel to Iran (and also possibly Lebanon and Syria). I reported that the
ships of Israel’s Ofer Brothers were suspected by the U.S. of breaking the
international sanctions regime against Iran. The reason they did was,
at least in part, to ferry Mossad agents to and from Iran. One of them
may possibly have been Zygier. In addition, several of the agents
involved in the al-Mabouh assassination left Dubai via ferry to Iran.
Israel is known to have an MEK-facilitated spy network inside Iran which
helped in the nuclear scientist assassinations and other sabotage
efforts. It’s possible an Ofer Brothers ship took those agents back to
Israel. Again, this is speculation but based on known facts I’ve
reported earlier.

What’s important about this is that these three
countries are places in which the Mossad is very active (or wishes to be).
In Iran, the Mossad has participated in acts of terror against the regime
including the assassination of five nuclear scientists. Israel has also
attacked Syria at least twice in the past four years, which required on the
ground assistance from either agents or special forces who infiltrated
the country in both cases. Israel also assassinated Imad Mugniyeh and a
Syrian general in the past few years. Each would’ve required agents
covertly operating on Syria territory.

The Association for Civil
Rights in Israel has asked the Israeli government to remove the gag order in
this case. It also posed several pressing questions about how it treated Ben
Zygier after he was arrested. Among them, it asked on what basis Israel
determined that Zygier had committed suicide and whether there was any
evidence his death may’ve occured through other means. This is an allusion
to rumors that he may’ve been murdered in prison by the authorities. Though
I stress that these are rumors and not established facts.

ACRI also
asks who was monitoring the prisoner and why they allowed him to kill
himself? Which agency and specific personnel were responsible? What, if any
actions were taken in the aftermath of his death? Regarding his detention by
the Mossad/Shin Bet, what actions did they take to determine how Zygier was
able to do the things he did which may’ve endangered Israel. Was there any
internal review of the entire incident and what were the results of
it?

In the national security state, questions are almost never answered
transparently or publicly, but it’s important they be asked to hold
officials responsible.

I spoke today with a representative of an
Israeli human rights NGO and asked what he knew about any legal process that
might’ve happened in Zygier’s case. I’ve heard Channel 10¢s chief political
correspondent interviewed yesterday, saying there was none. But this human
rights officer said he couldn’t comment on the matter. Which is exceedingly
interesting. It could mean, if Channel 10¢s report is correct, that
Zygier received no due process or trial, in which case Israel was had
violated its own laws and rights of not just an Israeli citizen, but an
Australian citizen. This would involve grave implications for
Australia-Israel relations. Or it could mean Zygier received some sort
of secret Israeli trial which again would be unprecedented under Israeli
law. The only other individual whose treatment parallels this was KGB
spy, Marcus Klingberg, who I’ve mentioned in previous posts on this
issue.

I just spoke to an Israeli human rights lawyer who believes that
Zygier was likely afforded some very basis legal process, but that it is
unprecedented for there to be a secret indictment, secret trial, and
secret detention. He also believes if that is the case, Zygier had to
have an attorney. Given what transpired I believe it’s unlikely an
Israeli attorney would want to own up to the fact that his or her
representation was so ineffective that his client despaired and killed
himself. I also believe it’s unprecedented for there to remain a gag
order against discussing a case years after the defendant has
died.

Yesterday, 28,000 people visited this site, one of the largest
amounts of visitors ever seen here. By noon today, I expect nearly 10,000
visitors. Over 60% came from Israel, starving for information on this
case of vital national importance. It’s disturbing they couldn’t turn
to their own press for original reporting. The partial Israel gag
allows only reporting on this story originating abroad. Imagine you
live in Paducah and there’s a corruption scandal involving the city
council. But the police chief tells your local paper it can’t report on
the story. Instead the only source of information you have will be a
newspaper reporting from Toronto or Melbourne. Make sense? That’s
Israel for you.

About Me

'Mission statement'.
I am convinced that jewish individuals and groups have an enormous influence on the world. The MSM are, for almost all people, the only source of information, and these are largely controlled by jewish people.
So there is a huge under-reporting on jewish influence in the world.
I see it as my mission to try to close this gap. To quote Henry Ford: "Corral the 50 wealthiest jews and there will be no wars." `(Thomas Friedman wrote the same in Haaretz, about the war against Iraq! See yellow marked area, blog 573)
If that is true, my mission must be very beneficial to humanity.